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Criterion December Releases (US - DVD R1 | BD RA)

The Criterion Collection announces their release lineup for December...

Criterion has announced their releases for the month of December. Each film will be available on both DVD and Blu-ray, with the same special features.

Design for Living

Quote: Release Date: 6 Dec 2011 SRP: $39.95

Synopsis: Gary Cooper, Fredric March, and Miriam Hopkins play a trio of Americans in Paris who enter into a very adult “gentleman’s” agree­ment, in this continental pre-Code comedy freely adapted by Ben Hecht from a play by Noël Coward, and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. A risqué relationship comedy and a witty take on creative pursuits, it concerns a commercial artist (Hopkins) unable—or unwilling—to choose between the equally dashing painter (Cooper) and playwright (March) she meets on a train en route to the City of Light. Design for Living is Lubitsch at his most adroit, an entertainment at once debonair and racy, featuring three stars at the height of their allure.

Disc Features -New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition -"The Clerk", starring Charles Laughton—director Ernst Lubitsch’s segment of the 1932 film If I Had a Million, which he made just before Design for Living -Selected-scene commentary by film professor William Paul - Play of the Week: A Choice of Coward, a 1964 British television production of the play Design for Living, introduced on camera by playwright Noël Coward -New interview with film scholar and screenwriter Joseph McBride on Lubitsch and Ben Hecht’s screen adaptation of the Coward play -A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Kim Morgan

The Lady Vanishes

Quote: Release Date: 6 Dec 2011 SRP: $39.95

Synopsis: In Alfred Hitchcock’s most quick-witted and devilish comic thriller, the beautiful Margaret Lockwood, traveling across Europe by train, meets a charming spinster (Dame May Whitty), who then seems to disappear into thin air. The younger woman turns investigator and finds herself drawn into a complex web of mystery and high adventure. Also starring Michael Redgrave, The Lady Vanishes remains one of the great filmmaker’s purest delights.

Branded to Kill

Quote: Release Date: 13 Dec 2011 SRP: $39.95

Synopsis: When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired. Branded to Kill tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin (chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) with a fetish for sniffing boiled rice who botches a job and ends up a target himself. This is Suzuki at his most extreme—the flabbergasting pinnacle of his sixties pop-art aesthetic.

Tokyo Drifter

Quote: Release Date: 13 Dec 2011 SRP: $39.95

Synopsis: In this jazzy gangster film, reformed killer Phoenix Tetsu’s attempt to go straight is squashed when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang. This onslaught of stylized violence and trippy colors got director Seijun Suzuki in trouble with Nikkatsu studio heads, who were put off by his anything-goes, in-your-face aesthetic, equal parts Russ Meyer, Samuel Fuller, and Nagisa Oshima. Tokyo Drifter is a delirious highlight of the brilliantly excessive Japanese cinema of the sixties.

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Gabe - whilst I agree with you about Branded to Kill (the first Seijun Suzuki film I saw) not being one to respin often, Tokyo Drifter is definitely a film I get out every year just for its visuals alone. The upgrade for both colour as well as cover is going to be great.

Just bought in the last sale The Lady Vanishes (I KNEW I should have held off as it seems they're starting to upgrade their earlier titles and taking themselves seriously when they say they're going to BRay upgrade all their titles - can't wait to see if they actually do The Rock) so sadly can't take advantage of the upgrade. Bought a US Bluray player when I was in the US earlier this year and the black and white films look absolutely devine on it.